Kaleidoscopic.

 

I made this little tabletop quilt for my mom for Christmas.  I don’t think she was very impressed.  Which to be honest I’m not totally surprised.  It’s sort of ugly.  It’s the only present I made this year, which is a good thing since it took me waaay longer than I planned.  And that was doing a really sloppy job with it.  I hate to think how long it would have taken if I’d actually used some precision.

You can see my truly awful hand quilting and poorly matched piecing in the photo above.  In case you can’t tell, this is a very small kaleidoscope quilt à la Paula Nadlestern.  I own these two books.

While I find most of her quilts visually jarring, I think her piecing concept is a little bit of design genius.  Her process suits me because you “design as you go”.  I find this a much more enjoyable type of piecing than “regular” quiltmaking where most of the designing is done at the beginning and then the rest is just production.

Unfortunately, you get pretty sketchy results when you scale the whole thing down to 8”x10” and don’t have hours and hours to spend searching through your piles and piles of stash for the perfect combinations.   Despite, you know, what would at first glance seem like a lot of choices.

 

I have crazy stash.

I did rediscover just how much blue and white fabric I had purchased six years ago with the idea of making a full-size kaleidoscope/snowflake quilt.  We’re talking dozens of yards.   I collected the fabric and then I put it aside for a “better time” to start working.  Then I got distracted by making clothes. 

Once while I was shopping in the now-defunct local quilt shop one of the women there asked me why I didn’t take a machine quilting class that I’d expressed interest in. 

“I don’t have time,” I said. 

“Why not?  What are you doing?” 

“I make a lot of clothes.” 

She literally “tsked” and shook her head in disgust.  “Why are you wasting your time on clothes?” she asked.  It was pretty funny.

Although she had a point.

Best. Song. Ever.

I ♥ AV Club.

 
Electric Six covers "You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch"

Cashing In My CDs.

Ha.  You didn’t think I meant money, did you?  Like I have money.  Psssht.

No, I have something much richer and more meaningful: used CDs.  I have literally dozens of these things.  My employer send me files on them and once I’ve downloaded them, they’re useless.

Totally and utterly useless.

Unless you want to make one of these:

 

Or one of these:

 

Or even these:

 

Hmmmm.

Hahha.  I didn’t put in any photos.  You noticed that, right?  To be honest, I did not find one single solitary “CD craft” that I would even remotely consider making.  And I didn’t really feel like poking fun at the crafts that other people did (in some bizarre way feel compelled to) make.

 

CD crafts.  Suggestions?

En Vogue. Not.

So the big kerfuffle lately is, of course, the super-hush-hush digital Vogue Archive.  Which is, essentially, a digital copy of every single solitary issue of Vogue ever printed.  From cover to cover.  And you can subscribe to it.

Oooooo.  Ahhhhhh.  Ooooooooh.

 

Um.  For $1,575.  A year.

 

Yeeeaaaah…. I’ll just get right on that….

 

On the other hand, there is free access to the Vogue Encyclopedia (rather irritatingly called the “Voguelepedia” or something stupid like that).  At least you can look up some basic fashion facts if you’d like.  Sort of.

 

“But wait!” you shout.  “There must be something for me!  Yes, me!  What about me?!”

Fine.  I give you this: the Valentino Virtual Museum. 

You heard me.

You have to download the app to your computer.  Then you can just wander around in here, looking at dresses, watching videos… click on a dress and you get this:

Sketches.  Photos.  History.  Zoom in.  Wow.

I love this thing.  I love that it’s free.  I love the attitude…. I mean, come on.  Their graphics quality setting button is labeled “good”, “beautiful” and “fantastic”.  That’s a little bit awesome.

You’ve probably already seen this or heard about it.  But if not, you should check it out.  I definitely wish all the couture houses would do this.  Right?

 

There.  I’ve done my Good Fashion Deed for the week.

You’re welcome.  Again.

Best. Comic. Ever.

I had absolutely nothing to say today so I thought I’d just share my absolutely most favoritest ever comic strip.  Ever. 

It goes with me wherever I am.  And now, it can go with you.

 

You’re welcome.

 

(P.S.  It’s from Calvin and Hobbes.  I think he stopped writing them about 20 years ago.)

I Had A Bad Feeling About This...

And I wasn’t wrong.  But eventually it worked out.  I won't bore you with the gory, painful details.  Suffice it to say, after nearly two months (you heard me, two months) and multiple phone calls to Official Agencies (don't ask) I finally –finally– got my Star Wars Purse Of Awesomeness. 

On the up-side, I actually had occasion to say to a faceless Customer Service Drone -- er... Representative, "Yes. This is the Star Wars purse I was looking for."

Seriously.

While this Star Wars Purse of Awesomeness is, well, awesome, it does have a minor (minor) flaw.  Namely, being a bowling-style bag it only has one inner pocket.  Which is actually one more pocket than I was expecting, but not sufficient pocketness to hold, you know, My Stuff.

But I have Stuff!  What to do, what to do?  Make Stuff Holders, of course.

I used this tutorial from FlossieTeacakes, simply because it was the first tutorial I found online that met my stringent criteria of being roughly the appropriate shape and size and having lots of pretty pictures to look at.  I'm super picky like that. 

In fact, it turned out to be a reasonable tutorial and I can recommend it. 

The only change I made to this first pouch was to add a little strip of ribbon for a zipper-pullifier type thing... um... you know, one of those little tabs that you can grab at the top of the zipper so as to get a little leverage on it when opening it.  I don't know if it's necessary with this particular pouch, I just like those so I added it.  Otherwise I made the pouch exactly as instructed (which as you well know is pretty unusual of me, the following of instructions and whatnot).  The basic concept is pretty simple and I could have figured it out without the tutorial if I felt like putting in the effort, but well... right?  "Effort". 

You can totally take this basic pattern and do lots of different shapes and variations, which I plan on doing this weekend.  I need Stuff Holders, remember?  Meantime, this is the first one and it's about the right size for my small hairbrush and sundry grooming and hygiene products that I keep in my purse.  My next variation will be about half this size for my Ridiculous Collection of Jump Drives and Flash Cards and then I’ll probably make another this size for Pens And Junk.

And why am I telling you all this, you ask?  I'm telling you this because this is a very simple pouch pattern that makes a nicely finished product that can be adjusted in size to fit a variety of uses.  It’s great for using up scraps and if you interface, it’s nice and sturdy.  Aaaaand, if you made up three in various sizes using fabulous silk remnants that you got from your friend in Japan last year (er... just as an example) and tied them up in a ribbon or something, you'd have yourself a nice little holiday gift package.  Now wouldn't you?

 

(Ok.  Fine.  It wasn’t two months.  It was five weeks.  That’s still way too long to wait for a Star Wars Purse of Awesomeness.  I am only human, people.)